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# 24: Crafternoon Delight!
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By Maura Madden
So, I'm a crafty girl, but you've probably already heard that. My mother was a crafty lady before me and remains one to this day. Though her mother before her was not, my great-grandmother was the craftiest lady of them all. She could sew a winter coat with full fur trim and drive a team of horses. Now that's crafty. The crafting is strong within me, and I nurture it in many ways. And my favorite way to do so these days is my beloved Crafternoon.
Crafternoon is what it sounds like - an afternoon of crafts. Held once a month in my humble abode, it is a gathering organized by my roommate and I to bring together crafty boys and girls to make things in good company for a whole afternoon. It is an orgy of creative energy, with glue sticks and paper and scissors and needles and thread and yarn. And given the horrid weather we've had, it is a grand way to spend a rainy afternoon.
See, wherever I roam, I drag the curse of extreme weather with me. If my powers were properly harnessed, they could be used for great evil. For example, when I moved to San Francisco in1997, I was expecting warm and pleasant weather. What I got instead was the rainiest winter on record for SF. That winter in New York, on the other hand, was unusually mild, and every time I would call home, I was given the weather report.
"It's really nice here, honey. I hear it's still raining there, though," my dad would casually say to me. "Now, that's pretty rare, isn't it?"
I would always lash out in anger. "Yup, yup, it is totally rare. Never happened before. This is the first year like this. It is a total fluke. A total fluke!"Ê
And for my return to NYC, the weather has gone all out. Snow piled up this winter with a vengeance unseen in my absence. And now it is cold in the early summer. It was 55 degrees and raining on May 25th. And it was 63 degrees and raining on May 31st, just in time for Crafternoon. The rain is fine, for it encourages activities of an interior nature, so I am somewhat thankful for it when it arrives on the Crafternoon date. But I am not thankful for the illness that I came down with for the occasion.
I think I have the SARS. A week ago, someone from Toronto came into my office, and now I have a cold. Coincidence? I think not. Did I then quarantine myself? No. Honestly, how could I? I can't let the crafters down. A good day of crafting is worth a case of the SARS. I feel confident that my fellow crafters would agree with me on that count. Well, maybe not the baby crafter. The baby crafter was probably not psyched for the SARS. But I tried to avoid the baby so no SARS-breath would get on her.
But my SARS lethargy made me more of a Crafternoon voyeur than an active participant. Paper was made, but I barely helped - I only threw a few petals into it. To make paper, you take lots of little pieces of pre-existing paper, dump them in a blender filled with water, puree them, pour them into a basin, and then dips screens in the water/paper concoction to separate out the necessary pulp to make a new, handmade-looking piece of paper. Our 4 year-old papermaking expert described the filtration process best. Her arms were elbows deep in the paper slop, and "Ew," she exclaimed. "It's disgusting! I don't want to ever take my hands out 'cause it feels so good."
And though the blender leaked and poured water all over the table, and much of the paper was not the loveliest shade of anything, everyone seemed quite pleased with their newly acquired craft. Then some people quilled while others made various things out of Shrinky Dinks. Don't know what quilling is? Come to the next Crafternoon and find out. I can't really explain it - you'd have to see it to Belize it. It also involves paper and is quite a special treat. At every Crafternoon, there are some crafters that bring their own projects. Last time someone started making an amazing wire puppet, and I spent hours collaging my hula-hoop so it's the foxiest one on the block. And there are usually diehard knitters working on their latest scarfy thing. This time, between the papermaking and the quilling, most people were occupied. But my one special friend was crafting something special for the day. She had purchased surgical masks at a drugstore and was sewing patches on them, to ward off the SARS, of course. But she really should have crafted them before the afternoon began so she could wear one. 'Cause my crafty SARS got to work early on this rainy Saturday Crafternoon, and I'm not sure that a crafty mask could ward off its bad germs. |
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